Emily Huxley's Story
by xpowellyx
Summary: Basically, I came up with a new idea for two new vampires, not really involved with the Cullens, who move to Forks all the same, and this story is about how the first vampire, Emily, meets the second, James. I won't say any more though. Enjoy :
1. Chapter 1

**Emily's Story - Chapter One**

**_Beginnings. September 9, 1992._**

_Ring ring._  
Ugh. Perfect time to call? In the shower, here!  
_Ring ring..._  
So I'm doing nothing all day, no rings, and then you choose to at the one minute I'm busy?  
_Ring - "Hey, you're through to Emily,"_the voice mail started, as Emily turned the shower off to be able to listen to the message, _"I'm not here right now, so if you can leave a message at the beep, that would be great. Thanks!"  
_"Emily Huxley! Are your fingers broken, girl?" the voice of Emily's mother's shrill Texas accented voice rang through her apartment living room, as she got out the shower in a rush, wrapping a towel round her on her way out the bathroom, "Or is there no excuse for you to call me? You said you'd call me about three weeks ago, and it's been easier to get hold of the President on the phone than you!" Emily picked up the phone, rolling her eyes.  
"Hi Mom."  
"Hello! How is it! Do you have a nice apartment? Do you have any friends yet? Have you met any nice men yet--"  
"Whoah, too many questions, Mom. Slow down," she chuckled, walking back to the bathroom with the phone at her ear. "It's all good, how is it back home?"  
"It's just... normal. You can call me Julie now, you know. All your brothers do now that they've moved out, I'm really not bothered. And what happened to your voice? That cute little Texas accent I brought you up with is all gone!" Emily grimaced.  
"I don't want to stick out more like a sore thumb here than I already do..." Emily muttered, raising one eyebrow in irritation at her reflection. She was what most people was call pretty in most areas - long, shiny brown hair (now held up in a translucent shower cap) eyes to match, a little pixie nose and a nice smile. But there was something that always got her about her image. Her skin was so pale, that in comparison to most of her friends, she looked like a sheet of paper.

"It's not that bad," her mother reassured her, but the fact that she already knew why Emily hid from every mirror was kind of annoying. "It just looks like you've escaped from some kind of home where you've been hiding since birth, hiding from civilisation, hiding from the sunlight-"  
"Yes, okay!" Emily gritted her teeth. How did her Mom not realise the reason she had been putting off calling her for weeks?  
"Anyway, how is that new job going?" Emily kept quiet, forgetting her Mom was talking. She got distracted by something on the TV, and Louise misunderstood.  
"Is it not going well? Ugh! Then that's pointless! That's the whole reason you _moved_ to New York in the _first_ place." she began her wittering again. "If things get tough, you can come move back here..."  
"Oh, no, it's fine," Emily snapped back to reality, "The jobs great, in fact I was just getting ready to go there now..."  
"Then how is my little big time movie director doing?" Louise's voice got all squishy - like how a mother would talk to a baby.  
"I'm, uh, good..." she smiled guiltily to herself, pulling on a vest over her underwear. "How is Dad doing?"  
"He's just fine. He says to send his love." Emily buttoned up a red and white checkered shirt, and zipped up her white pencil skirt, whilst putting on her white dolly shoes. She was in a bit of a rush for work.  
"Tell him I said I send mine too," she held the phone between her shoulder and her ear as she pulled off her shower cap, and searched for her badge. '_I know I left it somewhere near the sofa...' _she muttered to herself, away from the speaker on the phone, "_Ah hah!_"  
Emily sighed as she clipped the name tag to her shirt just over the pocket over her chest, eyeing it with dislike in the mirror. At the top, it read, "_Hi, my name is,"_ which then continued into a new line with much bigger letters.  
_"Emily."  
_In the next line, the font got smaller, turning to script.  
_"And I'll be your waitress today here at the Keaton Street Cafe."_  
"I gotta go Mom," Emily looked down in shame at herself and her next words, putting the phone back into her hand next to her ear. "This director's gotta get to work."


	2. Chapter 2 It's Coming

**Emily's Story - Chapter 2**

**_Beginnings - It's Coming. September 9th, 1992._**

"Miss Huxley!" a man's voice called from another room down the corridor as she closed her door. '_Ugh',_ she thought to herself, '_Mr. Daniels...'_ she took a deep breath, and put on a sweet voice.  
"Yes_, _Mr. Daniels?" he opened his door wearing a dressing gown, toothbrush in hand.  
"Do you have your rent for this month?"  
_'Damn landlords, I should of got a place of my own...' _she laughed sarcastically to herself. '_In your budget, Huxley? Don't be silly."  
_"Uhm, sorry, Sir, no I don't."  
"When will you have? You still owe me the rent for last month. Maybe even the month before."  
"I'm sorry. I have a late pay check due at the moment, could you wait until next week?" _'Or next month...'  
_The landlord merely gave Emily a glare, walking backwards into his room, and closing his door until there was only a sliver of the light from his room showing through. It was dark now - the moonlight shon through the windows, making the old fashioned red carpet look like it was a deep purple.

Emily creased her forehead in stress, and turned to walk to the lift. Once downstairs, she waved briefly at the girl at the counter.  
"Hey, Josie. I've got my key."  
"Sure, Emily." the girl replied, not paying too much interest. Emily had learnt not to be too conversational with the people who worked here. It was like talking to a _brick wall_.  
She stepped out into the darkness, and breathed slowly through her nose. The smell of night time here appealed to her, it was heavy, but refreshing at the same time. She looked into the distance.  
_"Keaton Street Cafe"_ the sign read ahead. It was about a block away - she could recognise the colours and the contrast of blue on green, but her eyesight even amazed herself sometimes. She still hadn't learnt fully where she worked, as she'd only lived here a few nights, but the directions weren't too difficult, as the cafe wasn't too far away.

She set off toward the familiar light, and looked around, still trying to learn her bearings around here. The tapping of the shoes of someone walking behind her was quite loud, it appeared to echo quite a distance in comparison to the soft padding of her dolly shoes. She looked over her shoulder, to see a figure, dressed in quite peculiar clothing. The person - a he or she, Emily could not tell, was wearing a quite old fashioned jacket and bowler hat, much like the ones they wore in the films of Mary Poppins, a film she had studied when she was in high school. Years ago that was now, she was 20 last month.  
_'Actually',_ she looked away for a second, when the person turned her head away, _"the whole outfit looks like that. From that kind of time. Maybe he's a street performer? ...at 9 at night. Probably not."_ she looked warily back over her shoulder again, only to see the person turn their head away once again, although the person was much closer than last time. Strange, Emily had been walking quite fast, as she late for work...  
She listened to the sound of the shoes, trying to distract herself from her unnecessary fears, as she was calling them.  
_Clip, clop, clip, clop, clip, clop,_ the sound was starting to remind her of the sound of a horses hooves against the floor. _Clip, clop.. _the sound was slowing down_, clip... clop.... clip.  
_Emily waited for the sound of the next shoe to hit the ground. She turned her head slightly, deciding whether or not to look back over her shoulder. _'Oh, maybe just a peak...'  
_Her heart rate fasted by about double it's amount when she saw no one there. There had been no turn offs or alleys, and there was no one in the road, crossing, walking away to fade the sound into the distance. But the sound hadn't even faded. It just... stopped.

The darkness made it all worse, she had been scared of the dark since she was a small child. And she had always been afraid of strangers. Especially mysterious ones.  
_'Pull yourself together, Em,' _she half turned back to her direction, _'Maybe a car picked them up, very, very quietly...'  
_...._clip, clop, clip, clop._  
Emily gasped, and jumped a little, as the walking started again all of a sudden, and was a lot closer. She dared not to look behind. Not just yet. She planned to get far ahead first, and her legs sped up to the rate of her pulse, which was racing a little faster than she could keep up with.  
"Oh!" she gasped, as she stubbed the toe of her shoe on an apparently invisible curb, curling the rest of her body with it. She fell to the floor, not realising the pain. Looking up slowly, her vision dazed slightly as she'd bumped her head on the curb, her breathing became a lot faster. The figure seemed to tower above her, it was a lot taller than she'd expected, especially as she was on the floor.


	3. It's Here

**Emily's Story - Chapter 3**

**_Beginnings - It's Here. September 9th, 1992._**

The figure didn't move. It just stayed there, staring menacingly at her. She looked back at the face, too shocked to move. She could see now, the figure was a man. The first thing she noticed was that he had pale skin like hers. Although it was even paler. As pale as a sheet of paper, as she always thought of herself. Looking at his face made her looked tanned. His skin did the strangest thing in the light - it looked as if tiny diamonds had been encrusted onto his skin, still leaving it flawless, but making it shimmer and glitter in the cool beauty of the moonlight.  
Secondly, his features were perfect. His nose was curved in the right places, it had no ridge on the surface of it. His jawline was squared around his chin, and everything came together to make it look like an angel had fallen to Earth. _Almost an angel_.  
The third thing she noticed, to her distaste, ruining the image of perfection, was his mouth. His lips were curved up in strange, unfamiliar places, giving her an evil smile, making the man look slightly disturbed, and scary.  
_Fourthly, she noticed his eyes. His eyes were normal up till the most piercing thing about them, that was making the small voice of sense in her head scream out of her to run. But all her senses were telling the voice to be quiet. That he was too perfect to be dangerous. Or could he?  
His eyes were the strangest thing that had ever met her gaze - the irises around the hugely dilated pupils swelling his eyes were red. Not slightly brown tinted with red. They were **blood red**.  
_"Wh-" she started, trying to bring herself to speak. "What do you want?"  
The man's mouth twisted into an even more sinister snarl, if possible. She was starting to question her sanity with the amount of confusion, shock and dizziness this man could be bringing her. And then he leaned his head closer to hers, hovering his mouth near her ear to whisper to her, speaking for the first time.  
"Come with me." his voice was like velvet, but it still sounded like an order. The velvet sounded like it had another side to it - like if you flipped it over, there would be a side that held ten thousand daggers in microscopic size; they were tiny, but each and every single one of them was threatening to hurt you.  
The mysterious man stood up fully from his crouch he used to talk to Emily, and walked ahead quite quickly. Too quickly, Emily thought. But there wasn't too much time to be thinking about that now. He held out his hand behind him, not for her to hold, but using one finger to gesture her forward, to follow him. She obeyed silently, crossing her arms across her chest. She couldn't run away. The speed he walked - walked was an understatement, the way he moved could be more suited to the word 'hovered', obviously suggested that if she even thought about spinning round on her heels and sprinting for safety, he would be able to catch her up with her before she'd managed to move an inch.

He span around to face the right when he reached an opening in the seemingly never-ending brick wall, to our right hand side. He looked once at Emily, and his look was enough (without any gestures), to get her to follow. She broke into a light jog, getting impatient and her adrenaline rushing to all of her limbs. The fear was making her want to get it over and done with, shockingly.  
When she turned the corner she saw him go in, only to jump unexpectedly when he was standing closer than she thought. Her body burned with fear, and her legs were aching with the urging desire to run. He grabbed her wrist, and she gasped. _'His skin,'_ she thought to herself, her wrist in a tight lock._ 'It's so cold...'_ she shivered, and the man smirked devilishly. He seemed to be able to hear her, his expression changing according to her thoughts. _'And his strength...' _she experimentally tried to wriggle her wrist out of his iron grip, without any success_. "Its unnatural. He isn't human, surely... why is he doing this..." _she was starting to feel despair echo through her body.  
"Because," his velvet voice was a mere murmur, but it made Emily jump in the suspense. "I'm thirsty."  
His words confused her. "H-how did you j-just answer m-my th-thought?" she stuttered, half shivering from his ice like temperature, half stuttering.  
"I'm afraid I think you're already half way there," he teased, his voice not leaving the volume of a whisper. He obviously didn't want anyone to hear what was going on. "And it's not like it's going to matter if you know what I am very soon, anyway..."  
His words sent a chill down Emily's spine. Did they mean death? Or did they mean worse?  
Quicker than the sound of Emily's pre-assumed scream could burst out of her throat, the man had covered her mouth with his hand, strong enough to keep her mouth firm shut. She felt a sharp, piercing pain hit her neck, and she closed her eyes, trying to scream. The loudest she could let out was merely at the same volume his voice came out at. Panicking, her instincts took over. Althought she knew she didn't want to see what was happening, her eyes were forced open on fierce command of her brain.

The man's face was no longer visible, Emily could only see the top of his head, the jet black of his poker straight, cropped hair. She knew what he'd meant by thirsty now, but it was a bit too late to be thinking about what anything meant. She was in too much excruciating pain to even remember what her name was.

She could tell she was losing blood; a lot of it. Her vision was once again going blurry, the things she could see around her blackening, as if someone was manually dimming the lights. She was growing weaker and weaker by the second.  
"Marcus!" she could faintly hear someone shout from behind her. The man looked up, and Emily could see blood running down the side of his chin - her blood. He continued to stare.  
"It's time!" the voice called, and the man, now apparently called Marcus, looked torn. Looking back and forth between the open bite wound on Emilys neck and the man who was calling him, he gave in and carried on for just a second more. But that was all it took. She fell to the floor, the loss of blood was making her too weak to stand. In the last few moments that she was able to see, she saw Marcus looking down at her, wiping his face with the sleeve of his outdated jacket. He ran out of her vision in a blur, and not just because her consciousness was fading. With a sigh, Emily passed out, lying in the middle of a dark alley in New York.


	4. What's Happening?

**Emily's Story - Chapter 4**

**_Beginnings - What's Happening? September 12th, 1992._**

Emily awoke with a gasp, unsettled by her environment. She couldn't remember anything - all she knew was that she had passed out, and woke up in the middle of a dark alley. It wasn't dark anymore, though, the sunlight bounced off the walls of the street outside, but keeping her inside her own little shadow of safety from everyone outside. _'What happened,' _she asked herself, rubbing her head. She knew she had hit it, she knew that much. The pain going through her head was awful, as if someone was punching her repeatedly. She looked down; she was in her work uniform. _'God,'_ she laughed sarcastically to herself, _'wouldn't I remember if I put on my uniform?'_  
She sniffed. It felt like someone had given her another nose, her sensed had all heightened by double. The whole thing was a too strange, _'maybe I was drunk,'_ she thought to herself. That was something she did when she didnt know what was going on, she thought of random excuses of why it was happening.  
All of a sudden, a huge wave of pain ran over her mind as she remembered a little bit of what happened.  
_'Hey, Josie, I've got my key,'_ the sharpness of her memory was almost as if someone had put a hologram in her head. She had no vision of where she was now - it was all taken up by her memory, as if she were there again. _'Sure, Emily,'_ a girl was sat at the desk of what looked like a lobby. Huh... Josie. Emily had some remembrance of who she was, she was her receptionist of her apartment...  
She stepped out of her apartment lobby, and the vision was so vivid that she could almost feel the almost shocking cold breeze hit her as she set off to work. She'd just spoken to her mom...  
It was all coming back to her now, bit by bit. She remembered looking at the cafe sign, and heading towards it. She remembered hearing footsteps behind her, and looking behind her.  
She remembered the figure wearing strange clothing... _'yeah, they looked like someone out of Mary Poppins...' _she thought.  
She remembered the footsteps stopping all of a sudden, and getting scared. She remembered tripping, and looking at the... man.  
His face was pale white, just like her. His face was the image of perfection, a fallen angel, as she'd called it. His eyes were terrifying, she shuddered at the memory. What she could see of his irises were bright, blood red. She remembered being too shocked to move, she remembered being lured in to follow him, his voice was so enticing...  
Emily gasped as the memory hit her of him talking again, and the rest was a blur. The sparkle of his skin had been so entriguing, and then... and then...  
She pulled her knees to her, wrapping her arms around them to comfort. She remembered him biting her neck... she instinctly pulled her hand up to her neck, feeling around for the marks...  
Two little holes she felt, right by the main vein, which was now pulsing under her finger. _'So, why am I still alive?'_  
The man... Marcus, had been called away from finishing Emily's fate. She sighed, half in relief, and half in fear. Her breathing got faster again, just like last night. _'Unless...'  
_She stood up, her knees shaking so much it was making any movement difficult. She had read sscary stories, watched horror films when she was little, and they were right so far...  
_'Come on Emily, you need to know...' _she thought to herself, as she approached the now threatening pool of light which filtered down through the gap between roofs above her. _'Slowly, slowly...'_  
She reached the spot, and held out her hand, slowly, inch by inch. She closed her eyes, half not wanting to know. Her eyes opened in the suspense, her mind was right, she did need to know.  
Her skin... it was even paler than before, had that been possible? There was no time for jokes, though, as she realised that her skin, just like the demon-like figure's had last night, was shimmering menacingly in the sunlight.

_[ I'll update soon, please review :) ]_


	5. Idea

**Emily's Story - Chapter 5**

**_September 12th, 1992._**Emily started to breath heavier. Being a... one of what she was, did that mean she was dead? _'In all those movies you've watched, they've always said that they were technically... dead.'_ she thought to herself. She pulled the hand down from her neck to the inside of her wrist, frantically feeling around for a pulse.  
_'Come on, come on..._' she thought, desperate to feel something, even if it was only one beat per minute. She searched every part of her wrist where the pulse could be, nothing.  
She tried her thumb, without any success.  
She felt across her chest to where her heart was... nothing.

Every time someone walked past the opening to the alley, she felt a monstrous urge to lunge at them. Each time, she felt sick at herself. Could she really be a monster? She spluttered without words, there was nothing to say. The scent that came from them was better than the first flowers of spring, even than melted chocolate. She closed her eyes, and got up off the damp floor. She pinched her nose with her fingers, determined to be able to walk out the alley, however strange she looked, without hurting anybody.  
She walked quickly down the road, not even daring to look at anyone. People gave her strange looks, some people's mouths even dropped open at the sight of her red irises.  
She could hear people whispering to each other, sometimes even themselves... she even heard snickerssometimes, about her uniform being all dirty and tatty after lying down on the concrete for... how long? It had been the ninth when she left. She held up her wrist to check her clock. The little box on the inside of the face said '9.12.92'... she wasn't really shocked right now, she had too much on her mind. She had been changing into what she was for 3 days, without even feeling any of it.

"Hey, lady, Halloween's _next _month..." a man sneered, and Emily ignored him. A woman started laughing along with him, pushing past her on purpose.  
"Jesus, you cold?"  
Emily looked down at her hands, they were pale like the rest of her body. She didn't feel cold though... _'Huh, I guess that comes with being undead.'  
'What can I do,' _she thought, pinning her nose together tighter whenever someone walked past, _'I can't live like this. I can't live with the thirst, and I can't live with myself if I feed it.'_  
Emily walked straight past the entrance to her apartment lobby, wandering aimlessly, pointlessly. Where was the point of her?  
_'I could try...'_ she gulped, this had never been an option, _'suicide?'_ She breathed through her nose, forgetting, and closing her eyes at the smell of the hundreds of people surrounding her on this one street. She closed her eyes on just concentrating not to bite any of them.  
_'Not here... this place is too busy. What about Galveston...' _Emily considered the pros and cons of suicide in her hometown. _'I wouldn't **have** to visit Mom, it would be too dangerous. When they find my body, I'll be cold already, and at least I won't have to answer questions... but how?'  
_Emily thought about it while she walked toward the airport, going over memories of her childhood there, thinking of more place to make her death subtle, to make it look accidental.  
_'The cliff...'_Emily's mind came back to the present and her surroundings, and she was walking. Well, it felt like she was walking to her, but she was moving much too fast to be walking. It didn't matter to her that she had any different powers like Marcus, they would all be gone very soon.  
_'John F. Kennedy Airport,' _the sign read in front of her, and she ran - very carefully at human speed - over to an ATM machine.  
She dug her credit card out of her pocket, and swiped it through, typing her pin in very quickly.  
_'How much would you like the draw out?'_ the automated cash machines voice made her jump. She hesitated over the options, and pressed the button labelled 'other'. _'$300, I think. Just in case,'_ she thought, as she typed the numbers in.  
_'Thankyou for your service.'  
_Emily exhaled impatiently as the machine vended the notes, at snail speed. _'Finally,'_ she muttered, snatching the notes and jogging to the entrance of the airport.

_[ please review ;D x ]_


	6. Jack

**Emily's Story - Chapter 6**

**_September 12th, 1992_**

After what seemed like hours of check-ins and searches, Emily finally made it to the boarding gate.  
"Passport please, Miss," a man at the counter asked, his hand held out already, expectantly. She pulled it out of her pocket; she had ran home earlier when she realized that she'd forgotten it, it didn't take long. "Thank you." the man muttered, his eyes locking onto hers for a second. His expression suddenly became a mixture of shock, fear, and confusion.  
"Enjoy your flight?" His wish was almost a question with his confused tone, and she had gotten used to this now. Every time someone passed her, their faces all looked the same. Emily sighed, and stepped into the tunnel that led to the opening of the plane.

Keeping her head down, she walked through the aisles between seats. She walked through first class... through second class... through all the other classes...  
"Oof!" a man groaned, whilst being knocked to the floor. Emily looked up from her ticket - a tall man, with short, curly hair was on his back on the floor. She had just knocked him over.  
_'Funny,' _she thought, _'I barely even touched him...'  
_"Oh my god, I'm _so_ sorry!" she said, kneeling by him, careful not to help him up - the touch of her ice cold skin would make him suspicious. And careful not to breathe in through her nose too. "Let me help you," she continued, as she noticed the contents of the mans carry on bag had spilled everywhere within reach.  
"It's okay," the man reassured, sounding almost as frantic as she was about it, but laughing at the same time. "Been there, done that. Always stressful flying."  
"Thanks for understanding," Emily breathed out a chuckle, putting the remains of pens and sheets of paper in the mans open arms. When she looked up, he was smiling at her. His eyes hit hers just like everyone else, and his eyes widened. "Whoah, red eyes? I've always wanted some of those cool contacts! Where d'ya get them from?" His eyes were changing so fast; they were now lit up with excitement.  
"Uhh..." Emily looked to the left, desperately thinking of an excuse. "The internet."  
"Cool! I might get some. For Halloween, I was planning on going as a vampire," the way he used the term so lightly - not that she could blame him, he didn't even know they existed - made her grind her teeth together. He frowned as he took in her new-found annoyed expression, and shook his head.  
"Sorry if I'm annoying you. Let's start over," he held out his hand, which Emily winced at. How could she get out of shaking his hand? "I'm Jack. Walker, that is. Jack Walker."  
"Uh, Emily Huxley." she mumbled, pulling her cell phone (the earliest model imaginable,) out of her purse, to occupy her hands with as an excuse for no contact.

"Nice to meet you, Emily..." Jack voice was now seemingly disappointed with her greeting. "Where'ya sitting?" His Texas accent was suddenly stronger to her enhanced hearing than before, and she smiled a little, looking back down at her ticket.  
"B6."  
"B6?" He repeated, a smirk appearing on his face, "I'm B5. Guess you're going to be stuck with me for a few hours!"  
"I don't really mind, nice to know someone else going to my hometown..." She instantly regretted making that statement, which seemed to unleash a flood of proceeding ones from Jack.  
"Really?! Galveston's your home town too, huh? Oh my god! Where abouts did you grow up? That little village between Dallas and the seaside?" All of his questions were stringed together without a breath between, and he felt no need to wait for an answer to any of them. "Me too! Oh my god, I bet you went to my school, too. I thought I recognized your name from somewhere! I think I was a few grades below you..."  
His endless one-sided conversation was starting to fade out in Emily's mind - not accidentally, either. She decided to tune it out before she punched him - not hard, though, she wasn't that nasty - out of irritation, because she knew that if she did, she would probably break his arm. Instead, she chose to go with plan B, that she used whenever she was with her mother. Let your mind wander elsewhere and nod where appropriate.

Hours passed, and when Emily realized that it had gone quiet, finally, she looked up to see Jack sleeping. She smiled slightly, he was really cute when he was sleeping.  
_'Something I'll miss doing.. sigh.'  
_As she looked around, she noticed every seemed to be reciprocating Jack's position. She was the only one awake. The only one looking around, the only one _fake_ breathing...  
_'I guess I could fake sleep,'_ she pondered, resting her head to the side, closing her eyes.


	7. First sight

**Emily's Story - Chapter 7**

**_September 12th, 1992._**

Hours passed; long, dragging hours, that seemed to go on forever. Long hours in which Jack would not shut up snoring.  
"Thank you for your patience on the flight," a voice sounded from somewhere - everywhere - above, Emily had sensed it before it even hit the speakers, "We had to take a detour. We will be arriving in Galveston in a matter of minutes."  
_'Finally'_, she thought, _'How much longer can I take that smell...'_ she looked warily to her left at Jack, who had his head leaning on her shoulder. Her eyes widened, and she pinched her nose shut with her fingers. How long would it be until she could get used to this?  
She sighed. _'I won't have too long to wait, though, will I...'_

_*10 minutes later*_

"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your service on US Airlines, right here in Galveston it is 7 o'clock in the evening, so change your watches! We hope to see you soon," the voice sounded again, and Emily got up quickly - perhaps a bit too quickly.  
"Aah!" Jack moaned, as he hit his head on the arm rest after the sudden lack of a temporary headrest. His tired eyes blinked repeatedly, until they evidently refocused. "How many times do you intend on hurting me today, ma'am?"  
Emily had no time to lose. "Sorry. Bye." she muttered at top speed, walking the fastest pace she could without looking... inhuman.  
"Hey, wait up!" Jacks voice that was so sharp to her hearing was starting to tune out, minute bit by minute bit, of her hearing. On purpose. She carried on speed walking, careful not to brush past any people she passed that were collecting their bags from the overhead compartments.

As she ran out of the airport, the smell of her childhood hit her. Her memory of being human was hazy; but this smell was unmistakable. The smell of bonfires was in the air, just like the smell that she experienced every time her family had a bonfire, which was quite often.

Her vision scanned the horizon, her eyes intent on finding some familiar landmark that would help her out. Nothing.

"Excuse me, miss?" a womans voice called from behind her. Emily sighed.  
"Yes?"  
"Could you please direct me to Galveston?"  
"We're in Galveston." Emily said, her voice flat with irritation. Her patience with humans was wearing thin. Inch by inch, they were wasting her time; and putting themselves in further danger.  
"No, I mean the little town nearby. You know, the one with the beach?"  
The womans words were like a trigger to a little switch in Emily's brain - the beach. That's where she had remembered earlier. Her vision glazes over, as she remembered distant things from her past. Her memory of her human life was so blurred now - it was as if every single human experience she'd ever had had been shoved through a sieve, and the only things that stayed in there where things she didn't need. Of course, if she really concentrated, she could distantly see the parts that drained away...

She walked straight past the woman, oblivious to her incessant calling. Her mind was elsewhere now. Drawing a mental map in her head of where she had to go, and she couldn't be distracted. She was on a roll with remembering where she was.

She ran - at vampire speed, meaning that a human wouldn't be able to see her even if she chose not to keep to the shadows she did - through forests, through estates, through parks - even through a road at one point, almost colliding with a car. Not that it would have mattered, anyway. The entire vehicle would have crippled under the devastating strength of her rock hard skin, leaving her unscathed.

Eventually, she reached the beach her memory so barely recalled. She breathed out a single syllabled laugh. This wasn't exactly the beach anyone else would describe as nice; the sand that should be white was stained with the depression of the overcast weather, the clouds above a woolly layer of shades of dark gray. The clouds reflected into the deadly looking water, which looked black under the strangled light, of the sun that was struggling to show. The tides ripped through the water, as if trying to violently rip apart the image reflected on the waves. The rocks that should have had a glowing silver tint were camouflaged under their own mass of moss and algae. Around the beach were randomly placed collections of seaweed washed up from the sea. And, finally, the only thing that Emily's hawk vision was focused on; the biggest rock of them all. A rock, that towered above her. A rock that towered above everything else within reach. A rock that would have towered over a twenty story sky-scraper that Emily had grown used to in New York.  
A rock that was almost completely surrounded by a deadly looking pool of black, a darker shade than the sea, that looked even more threatening that it would have in the light.

_The cliff._


	8. Don't

**Emily's Story - Chapter 8**

**_September 12th, 1992._**

It had taken Emily roughly... fifteen seconds to reach the cliff, and it was quite far away. Once she got to the top, she had to think twice about looking down. Or three times. She had always - in her human life - been afraid of heights. _'Okay,' _she thought, finally sat down on the surface of the cliff, her stomach face down to the cold, wet surface of the slate rock. She clung to the side, and pulled herself forward to peek over the edge.

The endless stretch of the shore that Emily had just been standing on a moment ago seemed like a single patch of grass in a desert from the height she was at now. The majority of her view was dominated by water; ice cold water, the tides that infested it ripping through like tears in paper. The once distant - even to Emily's recently more capable hearing - roar of the thunder in the clouds had become deafeningly loud to her sensitive ears at this height.  
The rocks that had been so huge to Emily now looked like little pin pricks of green in the murky sand. She shivered, and shuddered away from looking down. She hoped that the fall alone would kill her, and the deadly ice water lurking beneath would make sure the job was done before she had to suffer.  
Slowly, she pulled herself back on the rock so that she was a suitable distance from the edges, her posture forming a kneel as she went. Her shaky hands pushed down on the ground, she rocked back onto her heels, and she moved up to a full standing position.

_'A little bit closer...' _she thought, her unnecessary breathing gradually getting shallower, as she moved closer and closer to the edge of the cliff, raising her arms slightly off her sides, closing her eyes.  
"Don't."  
Emily's gasp stuttered with shock, her eyes shooting open faster than she could think. She didn't look behind her, in fear that a slight movement might throw off her balance, and she would fall at the wrong time. The mans voice that came from behind her was calm - her senses told her that he seemed to be standing about a foot behind her. Her breathing stayed at the same speed, whilst she waited for some kind of explanation.  
A few moments passed, in unbearable silence. No explanation or identification came.  
"Why should I not?" she managed to whisper, her teeth clenched, fighting the anger at herself, and, too, fighting the urge to cry. Another few seconds of silence passed.  
"Please." the man's voice floated through the breeze, gentle and soft, but there was a hint of a desperation to it. Her breathing stuttered again, and one foot paced an inch closer to the peak of the cliff.  
"You say," he continued, trying to reason with her, "You say 'Why should I not', when the real question should be, why should you?"  
Emily shook her head slowly, closing her eyes again.  
"I think the real question is what are you doing her." she muttered, her voice a little bit louder than a whisper.  
"I..." the man stopped to think. "Please don't. You have so much to live for..."  
"You don't even know me." Her voice suddenly became defensive, and her left foot threatened to take another step.  
"I know that you don't have to do this," he contradicted, and Emily sensed the wind change behind her. The air parted as he held out his hand for her to take.


	9. Getting to know James

**Emily's Story - Chapter 8**

**_September 12th, 1992._**

Emily's eyes widened in shock. _'Don't have to do this?!'_ she thought, bewildered, _'if he knew what I was, he'd be assisting me by pushing me off right now!'  
_  
"I wouldn't do that."  
"Excuse me?" Emily asked, turning her head round slightly, to make sure she didn't mishear him.  
"I said, I wouldn't push you off a cliff. No one is worthy of that."  
She turned round fully this time, very slowly. "I didn't say you would," she whispered.  
"Well, you were thinking it," the man said, chuckling a little bit.  
"How... how did you know what I was thinking?"  
The man chuckled one more, but it wasn't the kind of menacing snicker the man who had... victimized her. It was a kind laugh, a friendly laugh...  
"Because," he stopped to look into her eyes. Emily gasped, when she looked back into his. "I'm just like you."  
His hair was a mousy-brown colour, cropped short, but still so long that it stuck up in random directions, although she could see his attempt to gel it down. His skin was a pale white, and it glittered in the sunlight - and it still stunned her to look at it - just like hers. His features were all perfect, and the tip of his nose was rounded to give it a cute, babyish look. His eyes weren't like hers at all - the irises of his eyes were an almost sickly sweet golden, honey colour. They didn't look natural; but, of course, what was anymore...

Emily, however, wasn't amused in the slightest. Shock might describe her feelings. Surprise. Maybe even fear? For all she knew, this man could be playing a trick on her, could be turning her in, could pull out a stake coated in garlic like in all those horror movies...  
"Now, please, ma'am, if you'd like to step away from the edge of doom, I would be greatly appreciative." His voice had a ring of a Texas accent, identical to hers.  
"Wait. Why should I not jump off this cliff," she stopped to gesture to the vertical drop of rock down towards the pool of black, "and kill myself right now?"  
"Well," the man chuckled, "for starters, it wouldn't kill you. In case you haven't noticed, your skin is tougher than a diamond. You'd probably break the rocks that you fell on, leaving you unharmed."  
"I can't live with all that blood lust!" The statement rushed out of her mouth in desperation, almost a cry.  
"Well, how do you think I deal with it? I'm just like you, remember? You... you get over it." he shrugged, smiling on one side of his mouth.

She cocked her head to the side in confusion. A minute ago, she was pretty sure she wanted to destroy herself, and now, she was being convinced by a man with topaz eyes to walk away?  
"Don't make me repeat myself," he laughed, holding out his hand once again.  
_'I'm pretty sure I'm going to regret this,' _she thought to herself, as she cautiously held out her hand to his. She took it, not feeling the cold of it, but that probably because she was as cold as he was. He smiled slightly, and she rolled her eyes.  
"It's going to take a while to get used to that." she let out a giggle for what seemed like the first time in years.

***************************************************************************************************************************************************

For a few hours they ran together; learning things about each other, both past and present lives. They ran through the forests, mostly - the beautiful compilations of green and orange surroundings around has grown on her since her past life. From what she could remember, she was a material girl, reaching for the stars, aspiring to live in the big cities, with a wardrobe bigger than her own house. But since this change, the natural beauty side of things were becoming more like home.  
"So, how's about I introduce myself," the man said, slowing from his twenty mile-per-hour jog, "I'm James. James Shore." He held out his hand again, but more of a hand-shake gesture this time, instead of a take-my-hand-before-you-fall-into-a-dark-pool-of-sea-water-from-a-great-height gesture. Emily smiled, breathing in a lungful of the fresh air.  
"Emily Huxley," she said, shaking his hand at the strength she thought that most normal people would use.  
"Owww!" He moaned quietly, quickly retracting his hand from her grip. Emily simply raised one eyebrow, not needing to ask. "Don't worry about it, most newborns have strength. A bit more than other more mature vampires. Well, actually, a _lot _more than others."

Emily smiled again, apologetic. "Sorry," she muttered, dropping her hand to her side.


	10. getting lost

**Getting Lost:**

"I still don't get you," James manages to say, under his hysterical laughter. "You, you..." another short burst of a chuckle escapes his mouth. "You seriously thought a vampire; the strongest, fastest creature known, or not, to man kind, could even take a dent by jumping off a cliff?!"  
He and Emily slowed to an eventual stop; the muffled sound of the squelching of saturated leaves beneath their feet becoming less frequent. Emily folded her arms across her arms in a stubborn, defensive stance, an irritated pout forming on her face, a frown to match.  
"Hey!" she whined. "How was I supposed to know that...? I only just found out that garlic and crosses don't melt me into a _sparkling puddle_!"  
James laughed again, this time with a touch of exasperation playing in his voice.  
"Well, now you know...?" James's comment almost sounded like a question. "So, so far I've got your story; you lived in New York to try and make your family proud, pretended to be a big movie director, living a secret life of a waitress. You were walking to work one evening, and get lured into an alleyway - which, by the way, was pretty stupid to do..."  
"Well, you said it yourself," Emily cut in. "I got _lured_."  
"Yeah, yeah, whatever. So, this guy... Marcus? Pretty much pounces on you. Almost drains you. But... he gets called away, leaving you unconscious, alone... and infected. Next thing you know," James paused, running over to a large boulder showered with sunlight, leaping to the top with incomparable grace. He raised his arms from his sides to shoulder height, and span round like he was modelling clothes on a runway.  
"You wake up... like _this_!" He completed his sentence with a triumphant grin, his brilliantly white teeth sparkling almost as much as his flawless, pale skin.

Emily sighed, her shoulders hanging low as she trudged over to a smaller boulder.  
"You put it so _lightly_..."she muttered, dropping herself to a dropping position on the rock. "As if it's a blessing of some kind."  
"Well, I guess I could say it was something like that," James shrugged as he spoke.  
"I would have to disagree."  
"Huh. I can see that. Hence the suicide attempt?"  
"Yes, hence the suicide attempt."  
James sighed, and ran his fingers through his hair.  
"I don't understand.." he jumped down from the boulder, landing in a crouched position. He then sat down next to Emily, keeping a safe distance between them; just in case her moodswings caused her to lash out at him. "Why do you think this... transformation, if you will, is such an anti-Christ possession?"  
Emily felt no need to look up from her hands, curled up into tight fists.  
"Think about it, James. Vamp--" She stopped, frowning as she desperately racked her brain for a synonym. "Vampires. What are the pros and cons of being what we are."  
"Well, we never get tired!" James smirked. "We get to be able to glitter in the sunlight, too! I mean, hey, they isn't so much of a perk for a dude, but it never gets old..." He chuckled, as he twisted his hands around in the filtered sunlight.  
"Neither does your mental age."  
James frowned. "Why have you gotta be so negative all the time? I'm just trying to think of ways and reasons to convince you that being like this isn't as bad as it looks!"  
"Look, I'm sorry, okay? It's just... I haven't exactly been like this too long. I think I'm still suffering from some sort of post-change depression. I... I... ugh!" Emily huffed as she stood up, walking over to a pine tree. She turned her back to it, and leanst against the sturdy trunk, facing James.  
"Also, James's expression lit up in excitement. "We get these cool eyes, see!" He raised his index finger to point at his honey-colour irises. Emily arched a single eyebrow, and gently shook her head.  
"Have you seen _these things?!_" She mimicked James's pointing gesture. "They're redder than... than... than _pure red!"  
_"It's not just you, I promise. Everyone starts out with scarlet eyes. But, after a while of feeding the vegetarian way, the start to turn my colour!"  
Emily's expression was seemingly oblivious to everything around her, except the voice she could hear. "You haven't been throught he cons."

"I'll never fit in, just like I wanted to. Just like why I moved to the city. To start a new life. Second, ice will now feel normal to me. My skin will be like ice. I can _never_ be warm again, James. And neither can you."  
James shrugged carelessly, and nodded. "Yup."  
"Obviously I'm not done listing the cons, but how does _none_ of this effect you? You can never have bodily heat _ever_ again. You can _never_ touch a human._ Ever_ again. You can _never_ have the relief of day that most people call _sleep_... and yet you stand there, as if the change is something as little as moving house?"

_( At long last, I actually updated this story. Please review, I'll write another chapter very soon. Hope you enjoyed it :] )_


End file.
